The reality of long odds aren't lost on Brandon Joiner. They can't be for a former undrafted free agent scraping for reps at the bottom of the Bengals' deep linebacker food chain all while recovering from an ACL tear suffered in training camp last year.
Don't think long odds scare him, either. Actually, don't go thinking any situation scares him.
It's hard to feel scared about football after spending nine months in prison.
"Things happen. People get upset," Joiner said. "I remember this guy tried to fight me one day going to the lunch line. There really wasn't anything I could do about it but just tell him, look, you are a grown man, if that's what you want to do you are going to do it, but if not let's just go eat."
Joiner witnessed events few would care to recall and understands a feeling of solitude only those who've served can commiserate.
The 25-year-old from Killeen, Texas, openly tells the story today of an odd, seemingly endless march paying for a mistake made in 2007 as an 18-year-old at Texas A&M. He tells this story not in glorifying his past, devaluing the seriousness of his mistake or exposing what many, including his current employer, view as an unfair plight.
Joiner discusses feelings of fear, regret, relief and rebirth so others can learn. So others can grow up prior to facing a judge threatening to snatch five to 99 years of freedom.
If life isn't about the mistakes made rather reaction to them, Joiner plows a path to follow. Not only has Joiner stayed on the straight and narrow since the incident seven years ago and, more specifically, his arrival in Cincinnati two years ago, he's become one of the more active Bengals in the community.
From telling his story in schools to participating in Play60 or United Way events, Joiner's time could be short with the Bengals, but all the more reason to take advantage of it immediately.
"You need to change the way people think or try to help plant seeds and move in the right direction," Joiner said. "No one needs to go to prison. No one should have to go that route. Then here being with the Cincinnati Bengals gave me another stage where kids are more apt to listen to me now. If I come to visit them in class I can say, 'Hey man, I'm here because I want you to do good. I want you to be what you want to be.' Now, they say someone cares about me. A lot of times kids don't feel that or they don't feel like they can take it to that next level. When they see me and what I've done and what I've been through they see there is always up. You can always go up."
'YOU FEEL ALONE'
While a freshman at Texas A&M Joiner and another man were indicted in January 2008 on two counts of aggravated robbery and one charge of felony drug possession after breaking into a College Station apartment and robbing a drug dealer at gunpoint.
Joiner served probation for the first count after being dismissed from Texas A&M, transferring to Navarro Junior College then eventually being accepted at Arkansas State in 2010. He wrapped his senior season with Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2012 after leading the conference with 13 sacks, placing him on the NFL radar. Then the drug charge was brought up and eventually landed him with a sentence of three years in prison.
His first day was May 15, 2012. It was a daunting realization as Joiner thought he put that awful, young mistake behind him with a perfect behavior record, graduation, community service work and even public support from his coach at Arkansas State Hugh Freeze and governor of Arkansas Mike Beebe.
One of the worst days of his life actually felt more like a relief than a punishment. At least now he knew when this nightmare could finally be behind him – almost six years later.
"The most frustrating part about everything about it was you couldn't really move forward," he said. "Even though you were moving forward you really couldn't get over that hump because that thing was always waiting for you. So when I kind of got a chance to go to prison, in a sense it was a relief, OK, I am finally getting it over with, but then it was also like, 'Man, I just lost everything.' "
Well, almost.
Amid the mess, Joiner went undrafted. When it came time for undrafted free agents to be picked up, Joiner's phone didn't ring for three days. Then it did. It was the Bengals.
"I thought, well, maybe it's time for a different route (than football)," Joiner recalls. "The Bengals were a blessing."
Despite being the only team to call Joiner, a man who would spend his rookie season in a prison cell, be on parole until 2015 and probation until 2020, the team still doesn't view his addition as a risk. Their research told them otherwise.
"We didn't feel like we took a chance," Marvin Lewis said. "All of the things in his life unfortunately came once he was signed as a college free agent, after everybody at Arkansas State and everywhere else had felt that everything in his past was done with. Unfortunately, somebody decided that now he was an NFL player and they would bring light to his situation. That was unfortunate for that young man."
Few can truly know how unfortunate. Joiner's sole concern in prison was surviving it to parole at nine months then exit into a career with the Bengals. Easier said than done inside that place.
"That's very hard because guys will try to fight you just because you are getting out," Joiner said. "Let's say I had 15 years and you came in on a little charge and had like six months and me and you got into it over spades or something like that – you are not going to make your first parole. That's what some guys' mentality is and they will fight you because if you fight there is no such thing as self-defense."
One altercation could mean another year or more for Joiner. People still regularly ask Joiner how he did it. The only response is he did it because he had to. There's no secret to making it through.
"It sucked," he said. "You feel alone. Even though you are around a whole bunch of guys you feel alone because you don't know anybody or anything like that. On and off switches are real thin around there. Just stepping on egg shells really because you never know what somebody is going to do or what is going to happen. You kind of just keep to yourself and make it through."
'ONE OF THEM IS LISTENING'
When Joiner left prison on January 15, 2013, he soon after made his way to Cincinnati to start an NFL career and restart his life free of his regrettable transgression as an 18-year-old. He earned time in two preseason games, then on Aug. 22 tore his ACL in a training camp practice.
He now views the injury as another blessing. He needed another year to find his football shape after his nine months away. He returns this year with the mission of finding some way to catch the eye of his current coaches or those on other teams once the preseason begins. He'll need a dominant August to stick in a crowded room.
In the end, he realizes his opportunity comes as much from time spent off the field as on it. His latest exploit came by jumping in with linebacker Vinny Rey to the Play60 event at Rockdale Academy in May.
"He's the type of guy that is naturally not really selfish with his time," Rey said. "He wants to give his time and help others. To hear he spent that amount of time in (prison) and to see who he is now, it goes to show you that people can change."
Joiner found a brotherhood in an accepting, understanding locker room which helped ease the process. He's never worried anybody would judge him for his past. Teammates became a rock to stabilizing his re-integration to the outside world.
He feels extreme loyalty to the only organization to take a chance on him and spent every moment assuring they don't regret it. In the process, he may just be assuring those who know his story he won't repeat it.
Joiner's message making a lifetime impression on kids more worried about acquiring an autograph or catching a football from a Bengal player comeswith long odds.
Long odd don't scare him. Little does anymore.
"It makes you feel like you have a purpose," he said. "You can affect somebody's life. It will stick to one of them. Out of all them 30 kids, maybe they wouldn't even care,they just want to see Andy (Dalton). But someone is listening. One of them is listening. The one that it does reach them, it means a lot." ⬛
BRANDON JOINER FILE
• Hometown: Killeen, Texas
• Age: 25
• Height/Weight: 6-3, 240
• Position: Linebacker
• Number: 49
• Born: 4-27-89
• Acquired: Undrafted free agent ('12)
• College: Texas A&M/Navarro College/Arkansas State
• Superlatives: Sun Belt Conference Defensive Player of the Year 2012
• Stats: Led Arkansas State in sacks (13), tackles for loss (19) and defensive line in tackles (48) as senior
• Background: Served nine months in prison from May 2012-January 2013
• Crime: Indicted two counts aggravated robbery, one count felony drug possession in January 2008
• Since '08: Perfect behavioral record, graduated from ASU, leader in community service, active in NFL Play60, speaker at local schools.

DELETED SCENES
As with any story with that much to it, there were plenty of quotes from Brandon and others that didn't make the original piece. Here are a few of the most interesting quotes that ended up on the editing room floor.

Joiner on standing in the courtroom facing his sentence:
"That's scary. The first time I went in there he told me I can give you 45 years right now if I wanted to. In the beginning he said if I see you in the courtroom again I am going to give you 99 years and you'll have to do 45 before able to see parole. That scared me. You are sitting in there and you know you have to do some time but don't know how much because one guy wants you to do a lot more than you think you should. The other guy wants you to do less. It's kind of like, where's the happy medium at? Judge show favor, work with me here. I'm only 18 don't give me 20 years. Just a sick feeling."

On the transition since he got out and reaction to his ACL tear in camp:
"I came here that April. It was hard going from being in prison for nine months to playing football again. Getting back into the speed, the physicalness, everything like that was hard picking up where everything left off.
"I needed that whole year just for the mental aspect. I am still picking up things here and there. I am still learning linebacker but I am still getting it. I'm better than where I was the year before."

Marvin Lewis on bringing Joiner in:
"I wasn't part of that process. We signed him as an undrafted college free agent, so one of the area scouts thought something about him at that point, and recommended him that way, and so they proceeded and signed him. I know that Mike Brown has felt that the kid got a bad deal. He wanted to see it through and bring him back to see what he can do."

DC Paul Guenther on Joiner:
"I had him as a linebacker last year. He's a really good guy. Really, this is his rookie year, really. He's getting better, he's improving. He's just trying to get the little things done right now for him to be efficient.

Guenther on not judging Joiner on his past when he arrived:
"I did bad stuff in my past so don't judge me for that."